“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the lord looks on the heart.”

Beauty is not necessarily visual; beauty can be non-visual too. For example, the Lord is beautiful (Ps. 27:4), but we can’t see him—he is spirit (John 4:24). His sanctuary is beautiful (Ps.96.6). The Lord’s King is beautiful (Isa. 33:17). And, consider the beauty of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. Despite contrived artistic visual images of him, we have no record of his appearance.

It is the word of God that shows us the beauty of Christ Jesus.

None of the so-called pictures of Jesus are true; they could never capture the accuracy of his divine nature, even if in part they could reveal one aspect of his human nature—his physical appearance. Even so, there are no visual records of what Jesus looked like. There is a reason the Second Commandment prohibits worshipping or serving images and idols—they can never reveal the truth about God the Father, God the Son, or the God Holy Spirit, especially in terms of beauty.

Nevertheless, was Jesus’s human appearance beautiful from what we know in Scripture? In Isaiah 53 we read a song of the Suffering Servant of God, which is a prophecy about the promised Messiah who is Christ Jesus. Isaiah describes him for us:

For he grew up before him like a young plant,

    and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

    and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,

    a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

    he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isa. 53:2-3, emphasis added)

 

This picture Isaiah writes of what the Messiah would look like is far from many popular images people imagine in their own minds when influenced by modern artistic representations. It is the word of God, not human-imagined images, that shows us the beauty of Christ Jesus.

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